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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Frank for Frank

I was commission by Frank Theatre to make a doll for their production of "Hamlet Stooged".

It's based on a smaller Stan Laural porcelain doll (ie Laural and Hardy) that was a bit too small and too fragile for them to use.

The head, boots and arms are sculpted from air drying clay and his body is of fabric.

My version has a personality all its own. For his spirit to come out I had to follow the original without constraining my creativity. A new doll of this sort can never be a copy, if it was its spirit would be thick and dead. I had to allow him to partake of his own essence, so to speak.

My much larger doll is gentler than the orginal who was more enigmatic and a bit of a smarty too, in a perfectly chaming way of course:)

Dear Jacqui Carroll, the director of Frank Theatre, came to collect him today so he is off to his life on the Stage. Here's Jacqui already imagining him in performance!

Jacqui thought that he didn't look like a Stan and has given him the name Frank, quite a compliment I think.

"Hamlet Stooged" is an Aussie folktale of death and adolescence reworked from the classic Shakespeare play. You can find out more about Frank Theatre here, or use the link in the Web Links sidebar.